Saturday, September 30, 2006

My first blogger meeting, although successful, has to remain top secret.

Sunday, I had my second real-life meeting: I met Amy and K! We had a wonderful visit, and I'm only sad that they live so far away. Amy has a hilarious post about the visit, with great pictures of us.

I had planned to use pictures of the visit for last week's Monday Bunny Blogging. However, Bumble Bunny was quite rude, and hid in his safe corner during the visit. He came out once, and went so far as to sniff K's foot, but then it was back to the corner. You can't imagine the trouble I was in when Amy and K left. Bumble thinks I'm such a stupid rabbit for letting strange rabbits into our warren. Sigh.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

I'm not blogging much due to trouble processing information, but when I saw this picture at Pandagon, even in my foggy-brained state, I could tell it was incredibly offensive:

Why is it that clear-headed white people don't get it? In the comments of the post described above, Sly Civilian objected to the photo. He ususally beats me to posts like this, and can be counted on to raise his voice in protest over offensive material. In my fast scan through the comments, I didn't see anyone responding to his objection.

I'm not going to go into an explanation of why this photo is so wrong when I'm this cognitively limited. But if you think the picture is ok, I suggest you 1) think about the implications of equating a western woman wearing a burqa to women of color who really do wear the burqa, 2)think about using a burqa as a joke, and what that says to all the women who are forced to wear them, and 3) buy a clue.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Where were all the people of color? The fact that the crowd was lily-white was explained by the fact that the people of color who were invited couldn't attend. Well, I guess that was easy to check off on the to-do list: "Inivite some nonwhite people. They can't make it. I'm done. After all, there are only a few bloggers of color."

Unfortunately, this is a typical response from a white person who is challenged to think about race and racism. In fact, there's even a typical response pattern:

1. Immediately invalidate the charge of racism:

"See, Liza’s pissed because nobody invited her to lunch with Big Dog. But, instead of coming right out and saying that, she’s seizing on this opportunity to try and generate herself some publicity by insinuating that there’s some kind of racist agenda at work."

2. Accuse the person of color of a selfish motive:

"Sure, lack of minority bloggers is a problem, but that’s not really Liza’s real agenda here. She’s using this as an opportunity to call attention to herself and climb up on the cross. (That last nail’s a bitch, innit?)"

3. Attack the person who dared to point out white privilege. Attempt to drive said person into the ground. Repeat.

A separate issue blew up over one hateful woman's attack on one of the women in the photo. The feminist blogosphere mobilized and rightly tore the woman's comments apart. That's fantastic. But the comparison is painful: a white woman is attacked based on her appearance, and there's an outpouring of outrage and support from white bloggers. A woman of color is attacked for daring to question why Clinton was only meeting with white people, and there's very little outrage and support from white bloggers. The attacks on both women were vile, hateful, and extremely personal. Both attacks should have been condemned by a large number of bloggers.

But where is the outrage from white bloggers over the fact that Clinton didn't meet with a diverse group of bloggers? Where is the outrage that this meeting was swimming in white privilege? Why is the vast majority of outrage coming from people of color?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

"Oh pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease! I need banana! I will be a good bunny if you just give me banana!"

Bumble received three pieces of banana, which is too much. When I told him there would be no more banana (one of the phrases he knows is "No more."), he dug at the carpet under my desk, tried to chew one of the desk legs, and savaged the plate the banana was served on. When all of this failed to produce more banana, my sweet rabbit gave me The Look, which must be seen at full size to be appreciated.

Friday, September 15, 2006

I hope she doesn't mind, but I'm adding my own suggestion to her list. My suggestion is illustrated, to help us smaller-brained women comprehend the rules.

Rule #11: Always walk behind the man you serve. Following this rule accomplishes two things: it shows your man that you respect his superior mind and worth, and it shows the world that you embrace your subservient position.

Oh, cheer up. The servants have to walk behind you!

Note the good form here: she's a pace behind, but watching him intently to see where he leads next.

A lovely variation on the rule! Walk behind the man, but with head bowed passively. Wonderful!

There is one exception to our rule. If the man has been desperately and unsucessfully trying to produce biological offpsring, and finally makes his baby in your body, you may walk alongside him. This allows him to show off his handiwork:

When the pregnancy is over, immediately step back behind him and assume your correct position.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Not today. MBB will resume next week, but today I can't talk about how healthy and happy Bumble is. Today is a day for remembering:

What stands out for me when I think of September 11, 2001, is the tremendous response of people involved:

On that day, strangers helped each other, people around the world expressed horror, compassion, and a desire to help us. Across America people lined up to give blood to help the survivors. It turned out that there were few survivors, but people were doing what they could. People waited for hours and hours to give blood to help out a stranger. These are the same people who piss and moan in the grocery store checkout if there's a delay. But they waited calmly for a chance to do something, anything, to help.

In addition to all the dead, these are the things that I want to remember.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

I wrote five posts on Tuesday. [First danger sign.] That's more than I usually write in a week, even if you count Monday Bunny Blogging. I only posted 4 of the 5, because I realized after writing the long 5th post, that I didn't agree with what I written. [Second danger sign.] Even though I desperately needed to lie down, I couldn't stop moving. Then yesterday, suddenly I stopped racing around and did nothing but lie still. I didn't want to read blogs or read books or pet Bumble. [Third danger sign.] Today I've been thinking about the futility of everything, and spontaneously weeping. [Brain, screaming:Pay attention already!]

Last time I experienced this, the doctors had raised my Effexor 2 dosage levels. It took away the pain, but made me cycle between hypomania and depression. The esteemed doctors decided to try raising the (reduced to original dose) Effexor by one dosage level to see if that helped the pain without making me cycle.

Nope. Bastards. I can only imagine the fun now as I'm going to have to wean off of Effexor and try another drug. Bastards. They really are trying to help me.

I'm overly emotional, so please know I'm not blaming, but I really miss Kaka Mak, and now Pippi isn't going to blog anymore and I can't even bear to think about what Granny is going through. Here's hoping the hypomania will knock the depression out of the park until this is over.

Now, it makes me very happy that they're including mental disorders, but it's unfortunate that we still have to ask that question. Mental illness is a misnomer. In mental disorders, there are things going wrong with your brain. I read somewhere that the brain is important.

Remember when Tom Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants when she was suffering from postpartum depression? Remember how Dr. Cruise M.D., Ph.D. said depression could be cured by taking vitamins? Well, they've made up. Shields said:

And through it all, I was so impressed with how heartfelt it was. And I didn't feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it.

One of Dr. Cruise's spokesmen said:

"It is true that his friendship with Ms. Shields has been mended," spokesman Arnold Robinson said in a statement. "He has not changed his position about antidepressants, which as evidenced by the black label warnings issued by the FDA on these types of drugs, are unhealthy.

Shields accepts that he's very sorry, and now they're friends again. I call bullshit. Shields knows the horror of severe depression. She knows that Cruise is against psychiatry, and proposes vitamins as treatment for major depression. She has to know that countless people suffer terribly from depression, and that most of those people do not have the money she does, so they get substandard, if any, treatment.

Brooke Shields has just served all people with depression one big, stinky shit sandwich. She's embracing friendship with someone who attacks all psychiatric treatment. Tom Cruise essentially spits in the faces of people suffering from mental illness. But hey, he made her feel special, so they're friends again. No need for her to take a public stand against his statements. Instead, she talks about how very sorry he was. She conveniently doesn't address the fact that he stands behind those statements.

I guess the next time I get depressed, I'm going to throw out my lithium, and take some Flintstones vitamins! My favorite Flintstones vitamin was always the car, but there weren't very many cars in each bottle.

My absolute favorite would be a purple or a yellow car!

I hope I get far enough into the bottle to get a car before I kill myself.

I hope everyone who smugly enjoys good health gets a frigging clue and realizes that they are lucky, not good. I hope that people who feel superior to those with poor health get smacked with a big dose of random chance. I hope that people with class privilege who sneer at the poor lose all of their privilege and have to navigate the US health system alone. I hope that every doctor who writes derisively of Medicaid patients has to undergo a painful rectal procedure.

Which feeds do you subscribe to?I don't know how to do this! So I click on blogs of people taking a break, and repeatedly get nothing new. Then I quit trying daily for awhile, and miss several great posts. Dammit!